Saps, Blackjacks and Slungshots: A History of Forgotten Weapons

Saps, Blackjacks and Slungshots: A History of Forgotten Weapons

Published by Gatekeeper Press

2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

Columbus, OH 43123

www.GatekeeperPress.com

Copyright © 2018 by Robert Escobar

All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

The images and quotations presented are used solely for analysis, criticism, commentary and the study of history. Any that are not in the public domain are copyright of their respective owners and are presented solely for editorial purposes. This book in no way attempts to infringe

on any copyrights.

ISBN: 9781619848764

eISBN: 9781619848757

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Part I Born of Sand and Sea

Chapter 1: A Certain Group of Weapons

Chapter 2: From the Sand, From the Land

Chapter 3: From the Sea

Chapter 4: That Which You Crush With

Part II In the Alley and on the Frontier

Chapter 5: Saps Take Shape

Chapter 6: Criminals, Cops and Cowboys

Chapter 7: Infernal Machines

Part III The Age of the Sap and the Jack

Chapter 8: The Moderns

Chapter 9: Gangland, Bars and Boxcars

Chapter 10: What Do We Have Here?

Chapter 11: The Irregulars

Chapter 12: Improvised Saps

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Name Game

Appendix B: Martial Arts

Appendix C: Odds and (Dead) Ends

CITATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS AND PHOTOS

INDEX

"He who calls what is vanished back again into being,

enjoys a bliss like that of creating."

—German historian Barthold Niebuhr (1776-1831)

Introduction

Jack Kerouac: Do you know what a sap is? Sap, blackjack - that’s me. Sap, blackjack.

Interviewer: That’s a haiku. ‘Sap, blackjack, that’s me.’ You better write that down.

Jack Kerouac: No.

Conversations with Jack Kerouac¹

A vintage flat sap. The striking head is in the foreground. Clearly this saw much service, probably in the hands of the law. From the author’s collection.

This is the best book ever written on its subject. Granted being the only such book takes a lot of the steam out of that accomplishment. It’s the untold story of objectionable objects, once feared but now forgotten. Our subject is somewhat fluid, it can be different things to different people at different times. It applies to one of my father’s favorite stories. A friend of his walked out of a store with a small shopping bag when two men demanded his money. He refused to comply, saying in his high pitched voice, I’ll hit you with my bag. The men burst into laughter that ended when said bag connected with one of their heads, resulting in an instant knockout. The other crook fled. In the bag was a hatchet. I collect antique weapons and at one point acquired a Native American slungshot war club from the mid 1800’s. That implement is as much a part of our subject as the previously mentioned shopping bag.

Now the great thing about buying antiques is that it gives you an excuse to read so you can learn more about them, the reading and learning then giving you an excuse to buy more antiques. My problem this time was that there was practically nothing to read, but I wanted to learn, so I had to write.

Saps, blackjacks and slungshots are small, flexible impact weapons of the West. They are all siblings and all equally forgotten. This then is a family history. It’s a disreputable family to say the least, black sheep even within the study of weaponry. They’ve been described as wicked, cowardly, Soaked in blood and cured in whiskey.² Journalist Jonathan Rubinstein said the blackjack possess, Refinements that greatly multiply its capacity for inflicting pain and that indicate a process of development which was the consequence of much thought and observation on how best to injure people.³ Ouch.

No surprise then that the people who favored them were called vicious, devils and lurking highwaymen. Strange though that they’d also be described by law enforcement as admirable or be emblematic of the law to many for generations.⁴

Less than forty years ago, a detective with a gun, a blackjack, a pair of handcuffs, and a badge was considered fully equipped.⁵

All of that will come in the telling of the tale though, and a surprising one it is. Our history traverses the globe and the centuries following the people that struck with them or had the misfortune to be struck by them. Discovering their roots was more frustration than revelation. I will never forget sitting at the kitchen table after over a year of research, engaged in conversation on the one hand while stumbling over arguably the greatest writer of all time featuring a sap at the same time. How had I not encountered that in countless previous searches? This book is the result of endless haystacks and collected needles. It was clear I was in for a tough time when I contacted the only person who had written anything relevant about these in years looking for reading recommendations and he was able to mention one book. The book isn’t even about them. I described my conundrum to a police officer. His interest was piqued as they are evocative of old time police lore but also because his father carried one while working Shore Patrol for the U.S. Navy in various ports around the world. He agreed there was never anything really written about them, they were always just . . . there. Always there, until they weren’t.

1910 Hardware store catalogue with various saps for sale. At top is a softened, flexible club. Below that is a classic sap (teardrop shaped leather bag filled with buckshot, grasped by the thinner portion). The braided items in the middle are blackjacks. Notice that the sap and blackjacks are just called billies. At bottom left is a slungshot.

Unlike the slide rule or rotary phone, this is not because they were replaced by better technology (I would argue). They simply fell out of fashion with the law for reasons we’ll later see and thereafter with the public at large.

You’re forgiven for thinking that objects overlooked for oh, a thousand years must lack for an inherent interest but not so and not at all. These are just stealthy weapons by design. So stealthy they escaped much notice even in their prime. Their unique capabilities were vastly underappreciated in martial arts circles as well. We’ll give them their due there too as these are not just small bludgeons. Technique and technical talk like construction, materials, types and uses are developed throughout the book instead of compartmentalized. This is not a textbook, it’s a story. I promise that story will teach you a lot about a little and a little about a lot. Even those ‘little’ bits are sometimes unknown to experts in their respective fields (seriously).

I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. Actor Dick Powell portraying detective Philip Marlowe in the 1944 film Murder My Sweet⁶

Let’s dive in.

Part I

Born of Sand and Sea

Chapter 1:

A Certain Group of Weapons

Because possession of a sap is ‘presumptive evidence of unlawful violent intentions.’ United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, February 3, 1993¹

1893 cartoon juxtaposing the weapon of law and order, the policeman’s billy club, with the arsenal of criminality and corruption, the blackjack (in hand), pistols and a knife.

What is a sap or a blackjack (the two are inextricably linked)? The Concise Dictionary of Crime and Justice lives up to its name when it says, a small, concealable club-like weapon. ² 1933’s Rough Stuff: The Life Story of a Gangster calls them pocket clubs. ³ What on Earth is a slungshot? In The People v. Williams (California 1929) a court defined it as, A small mass of metal or stone fixed on a flexible handle, strap or the like, used as a weapon. ⁴ How were they used? The existing literature, small though it is, provides a master class on bluntness (appropriately enough). Used for hitting people, ⁵ Usually is directed at the head. ⁶ And while simple questions deserve simple answers, the truth is infinitely more complex, colorful and confusing.

Saps, blackjacks and slungshots are closely related weapons that share a common set of features, grew out of the same milieu and have never had history’s gaze focused upon them. They are impact weapons from bygone eras, when a man preparing for some ‘rough stuff’ was as likely to reach for one as he was a knife or a gun. One example from before the U.S. Civil War says,

I never thought of going uptown without a pistol in my pocket, a knife in my belt, and a blackjack handy.⁷

Many a bartender kept one in a similar fashion to the following,

Beneath the bar was parked some standard equipment for a frontier saloon, consisting of a blackjack (short, leather-covered club) for quieting boisterous customers, a sawed-off shotgun to discourage holdups and a bottle of knockout drops to help part a fool and his money even sooner!⁸

At their most basic, they are all small, concealable, flexible and weighted bludgeons. Leather is the most often used material on the outside and lead the most often held on the inside but they can be made out of almost anything. You’re standing in a barren field and all you have on you are your clothes? You can be armed with an effective weapon in minutes. Let’s see any other self-defense implement under the sun match that. An English sailor in 1861 sensed there would be trouble long before his ship reached its destination, Cuba. He was right. He used four bullets, some writing paper and rope to make a slungshot that he would later have to answer for at the Old Bailey Courthouse in London.⁹ That brings up another common feature, a composite nature. A policeman’s old fashioned billy club was usually a solid piece of turned hardwood. A pair of brass knuckles, not necessarily made of brass by the way, is fashioned from a single piece of metal. The benefit of a solid object being used for an impact weapon is obvious yet our subject is quite different. Honestly they’re strange and improbable contraptions as we’ll see. This may help explain another oddity. Technologically speaking there is no reason many of them could not have been invented in Babylon or the like millennia ago, yet they really thrived in the modern world. Think of saps, blackjacks and slungshots as the wayward companions of brass knuckles and the billy club that abruptly disappeared from sight despite once being as common as they were infamous.

No book has apparently ever been written about them.¹⁰ A source that does mention them usually does so with a sentence or two. Even books that deal with the exact right times, people and professions sometimes omit them entirely. Finally I dare say you would have trouble finding any subject with less readily available information online in any format (not counting my own YouTube channel- Object History). I guess I can understand that not everyone cares what exactly was used to hit someone over the head with in a bygone historical incident. This however, is not fitting treatment for objects that were used from ancient times to the 21st century, most notably by generations of American policeman and gangsters. There are still laws severely restricting their possession, much less use, in most of the United States. Their European progenitors were used at least as early as the Middle Ages. They and their forebears make appearances in works by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy and seemingly in every hard-boiled detective novel ever written. On screen they’ve been employed against James Bond, Cool Hand Luke, The Dude and Homer Simpson. They’ve been wielded by Charles Bronson, Sean Connery, Sean Penn and many more.

One arguably appears on the cover of the first ever comic book as well as in the pages of countless others.

Even a superhero version of a fictional detective cannot escape a veritable rite of passage for that lot, getting blackjacked from behind. Image property of DC Comics.

In real life Al Capone used his to knock the mayor of Chicago around in public. American music legend Hank Williams gave them out as welcome presents to new bandmates. Even a U.S. president carried one while in office. Saps and jacks (shorthand for everything except slungshots) were mass produced for decades in the states by companies as well known as Smith and Wesson. Policemen’s uniforms in the U.S. had a special pocket where they were stored. In fact the adoption of these by stateside police would arguably be the first major break in terms of practice and equipment from the British model which had previously informed most aspects of the job.¹¹ They were also made in a near endless variety of configurations. Considering they are just, small concealable club-like weapons, the tremendous diversity of design speaks to how widespread they once were. They are all but entirely forgotten now though, even among the professions, legitimate and otherwise, that once broke them out whenever things tended towards the violent.

This detective was not destined for fame like the caped crusader but certainly for a similar sapping.

Partly this is because they have always been easily overlooked. Impact weapons have never held the allure of the blade or the gun in the Western imagination. Also, all three are discreet weapons by design; kept hidden in clothing until danger beckoned. The old school copper’s billy club could not be missed hanging from his belt. Today’s collapsible baton is in a visible holster, and impossible to miss when extended. Saps and jacks remain half hidden even when openly brandished. It was the mark of an expert that the unfortunate victim never saw the tool used. Even bystanders often didn’t realize a weapon had been deployed at all and that’s not only when the stereotypical back of the head shot was employed either.

Finally, those familiar with them were so as part of subcultures. So while the cop, gangster, sailor, hobo, bouncer and saloon keeper knew all too well what these were, and what they were called, many others did not. Speaking of what they were called, that is the proverbial kettle of fish . . . slungshot, blackjack, sap, jack, jacksap, billyjack, slapjack, flat sap, spoon sap, slap-stick, slapper, zapper, slock, sand-club, sandbag, billet, billie, convoy, cosh, life-preserver, persuader, starter, bum starter, priest, fish priest, Shanghai tool, monkey fist, Sweet William, joggerhead, beavertail. That is not beat poetry; it is a list of names associated with our subject(s) at various times and places. Perhaps because they thrived outside of polite society, their names are colorful, sometimes comical, and never really used consistently. The distinction between noun and verb is not a big matter of concern either. You can sap someone with a blackjack, blackjack someone with a sap, shanghai someone with a cosh, cosh someone with a priest, be sandbagged by a sandman, jacked by a railroad dick or jacked out by a blackjack artist. Given all that know that our rules are always loose and often broken. Is a sap a kind of blackjack or is a blackjack a kind of sap? Yes. Does sap mean a club made from the branch of a tree, a bag filled with pennies or a specific leather implement with a flat steel shaft and lead striking weight? The answer depends on the year, who you ask(ed); and what country or part of a country you occupy when asking.

It should therefore be no surprise that the remaining breadcrumbs left along their trail throughout recorded history are as scattered as they are easily missed. If followed, however, they will take you to the high seas with British sailors, the American frontier, the alleys where New York City’s original street gangs plied their craft, Victorian London, Australia, Nazi Germany, the places that inspired the film/literary noir genre, squad cars during the 1980’s crack cocaine epidemic and more.

The other fascinating aspect encountered when following this trail is of course the people who wielded these. How could folks who used lingo like the above fail to be interesting? These were real life characters with nicknames like Sparky (a.k.a. Jack Ruby, yes that Jack Ruby), Poochie and ‘Il Bove’ (The Bull). Men and women who could be found at Satan’s Circus and Suicide Hall in 19th century New York City, conspiring about an extortion plot at a late night diner in 1949 Los Angeles, fighting back a group of bikers in defense of a rock star and with Abraham Lincoln’s hard drinking and harder fighting friend when the two snuck into D.C. together on a midnight train so Lincoln could assume the presidency.

Despite their current lack of cultural clout, saps and jacks still hold their allure for those that pick one up. The reaction from friends when I hand them one is invariably similar. They stare at it in their hand, examine the leatherwork, test the weight, slap their thigh or hand tentatively and then give an admiring chuckle or nod of the head. There’s a strange, simple pleasure in handling one. A handful of artisans still make high quality reproductions of the classic models. Slungshots meanwhile are enjoying a very improbable, modest comeback thanks to their own unique appeal. Keychains made of paracord encasing a round weight are becoming increasingly common. They are usually called monkey fists although that is actually the name of the knot, ‘not’ the weapon. Their association with the past is entirely severed though as slungshots faded from common use and memory long before even saps and jacks did. They may now only be a historical curiosity but they are also curiously historical, and that history is worth remembering, and enjoying. This is a tale never told, of a few related things; the sap, the blackjack and the slungshot.

* * *

The Basics

What are they?

A certain group of weapons which are short, easily concealed on the person and so weighted as to constitute effective and silent means of attack. California words, phrases, and maxims as defined in the cases and codes.¹²

A Few Definitions . . .

Load- the weight that delivers the impact in our weapons. It can be ‘hard,’ such as a lead ball or ‘soft,’ such as a collection of buckshot.

Loading- Adding weight to the striking portion of a weapon by inserting a denser substance. All the classic flat saps and blackjacks are loaded with lead where it counts. Hence the saying, lead in the head.

Sap

An antique, frontier style fold over sap. Yes, that is a weapon. One of the classic old fashioned sap outlines is this teardrop sliced down the middle shape. Note that the stitching does not go around the entire weapon. From the author’s collection.

An umbrella term for all of the weapons in our survey. Originally a small club (made from a tree- as in a sapling).

A weighted sack used as a weapon (just think sap-sack).

Blackjack

Modern blackjack confiscated by a South Texas police officer in or around the 1960’s. Note the braided leather across the entire weapon. Intentional or not, this made cuts a secondary result of a strike. From the author’s collection.

Alias jack, it’s connotation changes maddeningly across time and space but will for us generally mean a more club-like sap (e.g. not a sack). Eventually it will specifically apply to an important late 19th century American invention (pictured here), a cylindrical shaped jack that has a coil spring body and bullet shaped striking head. We will refer to this as the modern blackjack.

Slungshot

Vintage slungshot with a long leather loop for a handle instead of a rope. From the author’s collection.

A weight, usually hard loaded, tied to the end of a rope or similar material which swings freely. The end was often a sling, presumably indicating a common linguistic link between it, the ancient sling and the slingshot.

Cosh

British term for a club or sap. A cosh carrier or cosh boy was a thug or a pimp.¹³

Victorian Era English fruit cosh. Funny to say, painful to be hit with. From the author’s collection.

Besides these there are various other entertaining terms and important derivations but they are best encountered in the story. Also, know that we will use our terms consistently while still honoring the deliciously sloppy usages of the past. Sure it doesn’t make sense to use one word (sap) with multiple definitions and as a noun and a verb but it’s tradition. Just go with the flow and it will all make sense by the end. As with sapping being an acceptable verb, we will just layer these quirks in. A full accounting of the name game can be found in Appendix A. Just be warned that because of the lovely loose lingo it is very difficult to know what particular tool someone meant in historical accounts. I have worked mightily to be correct in my assumptions. Case in point- if you read that a man in a London pub during the Renaissance knocked someone out with a leather blackjack, that actually means the mug that was holding his beer.¹⁴

What makes these unique?

They’re stunning- saps were the world’s original stun gun, designed to knock someone out while minimizing damage.

Duality- When there is a solid shaft, it is a flexible one. This theoretically provides protection to the recipient of the blow as the weapon will flex away from the target upon impact. Just to keep things interesting though, it can also be a force multiplier maximizing the destructive capabilities but more on this contradiction later.

Construction- You would be hard pressed to find analogous weapons in world history. Features that make that so are . . .

A container that is a weapon instead of something that holds one (e.g. sheath, holster, etc.)

Soft or softened striking surfaces

A club that fits into your pocket

A striking implement comprised of loose filling on the inside

A blade shaped weapon meant to be used with the flat surface and not the edge

It’s fair to consider the stitching, rope, sand, complex braiding and more that we’ll examine and wonder what caused someone to consider making a weapon like that when there were much simpler options available.

Focusing on heft for a moment, you may imagine that being cudgels of a kind these are heavy despite their small stature. They are not. The Bucheimer Corporation was probably the major producer of saps and modern blackjacks in the 20th century. One of their catalogues from the 1960’s has a total of 20 models and the average weight is 9.3 ounces.

A magnified look at the well-worn seams of an antique sap. Note the two halves (top and bottom) coming together. From the author’s collection.

Despite all of the above, reputation might be what truly sets these apart. Saps, jacks and slungshots were so associated with criminal activity that to this day in New York State someone simply possessing one is guilty of the same level of offense as someone else carrying a gun with, Armor piercing ammunition with intent to use the same unlawfully against another.¹⁵ They constantly accompany brass knuckles and the like in state penal codes, giving a further indication of how the law views them. Paradoxically, they were also used by American police and security forces for a majority of the nation’s history. Saps managed to keep their nefarious underworld association despite being so often employed in the pursuit of law and order.

How were they used?

In short, with more sophistication than understood by most. An un-codified set of techniques developed around them, passed from cop to cop and criminal to criminal for generations. Juanita ‘The Duchess’ Spinelli was a gang leader who in 1941 became the first woman executed by the state of California in 100 years. She used her knowledge as a nurse to school her toughs in proper sap targeting and her skills as a seamstress to construct them.¹⁶ If, like me, you are a martial arts nerd please see Appendix B for a rundown of why these are anything but the caveman-esque clubs they are so often portrayed as. Their unique construction led to unique applications, and nasty tricks. Fret not for much of that will come to light in our main narrative.

How effective were they?

For now let’s only say that saps can be unpredictable in the results department. Many users swore by them, a few others at them. Let’s examine two examples. The first shows saps at their most fearsome.

You would pull your slapjack out and before anyone ever had a chance, you’d hit the drug dealer as hard as you could in the jaw, or upside his head. This impact is normally so quick and violent two things happen immediately. First, a large wound would immediately open and blood would start flowing freely, second the dope boy went straight to the ground. I guess the slapjack really did three things because the next thing that happened would be everyone else ran in every direction they could. The Erosion of the Thin Blue Line¹⁷

The second happened on a chilly New Year’s Eve, in 1950’s Idaho, when three men picked the wrong senior citizen to assault. Emphasis added.

"On December 31, 1955, Marvin L. Williams, a retired laborer 75 years of age, was living alone in his cabin in Nampa. He had on his person more than $2,500 in cash which he had been carrying for some time . . . Talley testified as follows:

Q. Did you state to Mr. McKenna why you wanted to use the car?

A. To take Hicks and those two boys over, and they said they was going to try to get the money from Mr. Williams . . .

Talley, John Hicks, Robert Lee Downard and Floyd Darbin drove in appellant’s car to Nampa and parked near the home of Williams . . . One of them grabbed Williams, another started beating him about the head with a blackjack and the third one began searching his pockets. Williams succeeded in breaking loose, stepped into his bedroom and secured his gun. He shot all three of his assailants. Downard and Darbin were fatally wounded but Hicks recovered although he lost the sight of one eye." Idaho Supreme Court¹⁸

Bringing a sap to a gunfight is no better of an idea it would seem, than bringing a knife.

Chapter 2:

From the Sand, From the Land

A man was hanged lately at San Francisco, according to the Philadelphia Medical Reporter, for murder of a peculiarly dangerous, and for a long time mysterious, nature. This is a sand-club, formed by filling an eel-skin with sand. When this instrument was first brought into use, the authorities were greatly puzzled by deaths, apparently from violence, yet no marks could be found on the outside of the body. The London Medical Record, 1873¹

A pair of strange weapons unlike any other in this image are seen lying on the floor (right) during a training session in an image from a 1570 treatise on European martial arts.

The Sand

Just as each family is a union of two sides, so it is with our weapons family tree. When